


Hopeful Creativity Before Hopeless Negativity

by scribeofseahorsedad (puffinperfection)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: A Series of Scenes, Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, Happy Ending, Humanstuck, Implied/Referenced Mental Illness, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-02
Packaged: 2018-02-07 02:12:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1881174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puffinperfection/pseuds/scribeofseahorsedad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Your story isn't a big, long, interesting one with hundreds upon thousands of pages; after all, you're only fourteen. It's the short story about a hopeful girl with a passion for art who refused to be devoured by the darkness and hurt in her life, and these are your favorite parts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hopeful Creativity Before Hopeless Negativity

**Author's Note:**

> "Experiencing sadness and anger can make you feel more creative, and by being creative, you can get beyond your pain or negativity." ~Yoko Ono
> 
> "Strange as it may seem, I still hope for the best, even though the best, like an interesting piece of mail, so rarely arrives, and even when it does it can be lost so easily." ~Lemony Snicket, The Beatrice Letters

They'll try and use a hundred words to describe your mother - unstable, lonely, scared - but don't grant you a second thought when you interject to try and tell them the truth. She's depressed, and you know it, but they always tell you that it's something else. They go as far as to laugh and call you cute sometimes, but you don't understand why. You're the one that's there when she locks herself in her bedroom and sits at her writing desk all day, only coming out to fix you and your sister dinner and to meet with that very professional man who calls her a "literary genius". And in the dead of night she sits in her bedroom and cries, calling out the name of someone you don't know and begging him to come home. Why would they thing you would be oblivious to that? You're six, but you're not totally stupid.

But at the same time, you're sure that she's feeling better. She's out of her room more often, and she called the professional man to tell him to delay her next book. When she cooks dinner and cuts the meat, she's not as strict with the knife, and she's come close to almost badly hurting herself, but that's okay, because your big sister has always been there to step in and save the day. She even takes you in her arms twice a day and tells you she will always love you no matter what happens, and when she cries at night she doesn't plead for a second chance, but she does tell him she loves him and that she might never stop. She's obviously getting better.

But of course you won't tell anyone. They probably won't believe you.

\---

The other kids make fun of him because he gets angry very easily and snaps pencils in his attempts to keep calm. They make you angry, and you try to slip the dead mice that your cat brings home in their book bags every time they make fun of him, like the two of you have an unspoken outcast alliance. You wouldn't be surprised if he eventually had enough and got violent one of these days, and as the tallest fourth grader in the school by a milestone you're pretty sure he could do some damage. Until then, you're okay with giving your cat's presents to other people.

You're caught one day, but it's by him. A stupid part of you thinks he'll be mad, but he's not. He just asks why you do it, and you explain that it's because you want them to get a rotten surprise for being so rotten. He gives the faintest remnants of a smile, and the two of you talk all day, whenever you can. At lunch, at recess, and he even offers to walk you home, which is good, because your sister would be spending time with a boy after school and was making you walk home alone.

You learn that the other kids don't like him because he's brilliant. As it turns out, he's something of a prodigy when it comes to mechanics and athletics, which doesn't surprise you but apparently does the other students. You tell him that you're brilliant too, and that they don't understand that brilliance comes in all kinds of forms and that the best people are brilliant. You even show him some of your drawings, the best ones that not even your big sister has seen, and he quietly declares that they are, indeed, brilliant.

By the time the two of you make it to your front step, you're grinning wildly and, surprisingly so, he is too. Smiling is a good look for him, you decide, so you don't point it out because you don't want to embarrass him. Instead you thank him for walking with you and talking to you. He says it would be pleasant if you could do it again sometime.

And for the first time in forever your heart skips a beat, and it's out if excitement, not fear. Something tells you that this is the beginning of something special, even if you are only ten. It's a friendship that will last forever, you believe, and it comes with a sense that things will be looking up for you. Even if your sister is a ninth grader that would prefer the presence of boys over her own little sister and your mother is as lonely and upset as ever, you can see something good coming out of this.

The lights seem just a bit brighter when you walk inside.

\---

His mother first invites you over on the day of his thirteenth birthday, asking if you'd like to come over for dinner and cake and all that goodness. And you go, with your mother's permission, and fall in love with the family instantly. Unlike your own family, this one is lively and bright, and you feel guilty for feeling more comfortable with his mother, father, and three older siblings than your own family. They're all quirky in their own special ways, and as the dinner progresses they seem to think the same about you. His mother showers you with questions, and he makes little noises of embarrassment with every couple of them. For his birthday, you give him a sketched portrait of himself, and while you don't think much of it and might even go as far as to call the piece sloppy, all six of them are impressed with the work and send you compliments until your face goes red.

Then, the invitations become more and more frequent. They become your second family, your home away from home, and you all but live with them. You gain another mother, two more sisters, and, for the first time in your life, a father and a brother. You spend more time at their house than yours, but your mom and sister don't say anything about it. Your sister has been too occupied with a boy from her school to really care about what you're up to, and your mother is back to constantly locking herself in her room and sitting and her writing desk. She tells you to have fun through the door of her bedroom when you ask to go over to your friend's house, but it doesn't sound genuine. You don't think anything about it, though. She's probably just too engulfed in her book, you figure.

His mother is taking you home one night when an ambulance speeds past you, red and blue lights filling up the darkening sky. It races down your street; your heart falls to your stomach when it rushes past the other houses, and you resist the urge to ask her to speed up. The ambulance stops at your house where a couple of police cars already sit, confirming some of your fears, and you want to swing open the door right now, but you don't. The moment she has come to a good stop, however, you've thrown open the door and sprinted to your lawn in what could have been record time, and your friend and his mother exchange worrisome glances but stay quiet nonetheless. The policeman out front won't let you in, saying that there can't be anyone meddling with their work even after you're quite certain that you've convinced them that you honest to God live here. The ambulance guys rush in with a stretcher, and your sister is ushered out seconds later by another cop. She takes you in her arms and sobs, and after that time passes in a blur for the next couple of days.

Your sister seems more impacted by this than you are. While she sobs through the next couple of days you don't shed a tear, and instead you constantly assure her that things are going to be okay and that your mother will get better. You know she will. The doctors will make her happy again, and she'll be better than ever. You believe in the works of the hospital.

\---

To keep you from constantly having to stay at the dreary hospital or your even dreariest home, your friend takes you to a local art show after school on Friday. The show's set up is nothing extravagant, but you fall in love with each and every display instantly. From painting more professional than anything you think you could ever dream of creating to sculptures that look like nothing realistic, you're lost in awe. You decide for sure that you're going to become an artist, and that your first stop will be this very show. Your friend takes note of this, and soon seventh grade bleeds out into summer and your birthday comes around in August, and on the day that you turn fourteen he presents you with an amazing set of charcoal pencils and a brand new sketchbook.

And with that you drop everything and draw your heart out. You draw your sister curled up in an armchair with a soft blanket and her favorite book, and you draw your friend's family in a silly dinner table scene, and you draw you and your friend in a very serene setting, complete with flowers and a blue sky and puffy white clouds. And you draw your mother sitting at her writing desk late at night, with her head in her hands and a single candle lit, and she's looking down at a leather-bound notebook with tears streaming down her cheeks.

When eighth grade starts at the end of August, the teachers ask what you want to be when you grow up. You proudly announce that you're going to become an artist each time they ask, and every time after the look at you like you don't know what you're talking about. You know that they want to say that unfortunate girls like yourself don't get to have good opportunities like that, but with that fresh in your mind you're only motivated more. You won't let something small like that discourage you too much. You tell your friend (your best friend now!) exactly that, and he smiles and says that it's good for you not to give up. And you tell your sister, who's happy to know that her sister's trying hard, and your best friend's mother as well, who congratulates you for working towards eliminating the system. Finally, you tell your mother through her locked bedroom door, and when you get silence as an answer you think she's ignoring you. Seconds later, though, her door opens and she tells you that she's very, very proud of you, and that she means it.

And you'll admit that, at fourteen, you've been through a but more than you'd like to have been through, but that's okay. It doesn't bug you because you know things will turn out okay, and that your mother will get better, and that you and your best friend are too brilliant for people to like you just yet. You'll keep your head up and brave whatever is left of this storm until then, because if practically living off of hope has gotten you this far, you and hope must both be unstoppable.

**Author's Note:**

> Truth be told, I wrote this for my end of the year English assignment. It might not seem like it, but it got me a one-hundred percent "A" and a "Great!" from the teacher. Woo-hoo. 
> 
> Anyway, I decided that I wanted to write something Homestuck for the project the moment she said we could write a short story, and, knowing that I can write anything with at least a little bit of angst, it was decided early on that I wanted some sad Leijons. As I had picked the theme word "hope", I knew it would be expected that there should have been a happy ending. Thus, this was born. 
> 
> (Also, in the final booklet it is simply called "a short story with no working title" in the Table of Contents because I'm bad at this title business.)
> 
> That's just a little uninteresting backstory for anyone who might have been curious.


End file.
